


Courting Past Each Other

by ZehWulf



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Courting Rituals, Fluff and Crack, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Misunderstandings, Other, shocked pikachu face dot jpg, when you spend 6000 years speaking in code and it comes round to bite you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZehWulf/pseuds/ZehWulf
Summary: The sun was shining, and the air was downright balmy for late September. Tourist season was winding down, so the park was busy but not overcrowded. The ducks were in fine fettle, and it hadn't even taken a miracle for Crowley and Aziraphale to get their first choices at the ice cream cart.In short, it was a lovely day for a misunderstanding.ORThey're both in agreement that some romantic courting between them should commence as soon as possible, but unfortunately neither of them is in possession of their singular brain cell when it comes to deciding how to go about it, except that probably swans are involved. Or snakes. Or something.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 147
Collections: Snektember 2020





	Courting Past Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to the GO-Events discord server for the premise, when I was struggling to figure out an appropriate prompt to do for Snektember.
> 
> All love to my beta, [onlysmallwings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/onlysmallwings/).
> 
>  **A small trigger warning** for abstract discussions of real-life snake mating rituals that have our fav angel a little taken aback. **A more detailed, spoilery warning in end notes.**

The sun was shining, and the air was downright balmy for late September. Tourist season was winding down, so the park was busy but not overcrowded. The ducks were in fine fettle, and it hadn't even taken a miracle for Crowley and Aziraphale to get their first choices at the ice cream cart.

In short, it was a lovely day for a misunderstanding.

"Oh, look, how lovely," Aziraphale said and pointed to the pair of swans drifting by on the pond. "Do you see them, Crowley?"

Crowley, who had been doing a piss poor job of hiding the fact that he was staring at Aziraphale and not the scenery, turned to look.

"Yep. Some grand swans, there. Very… swan-like."

Aziraphale fiddled with the bag of waterfowl pellets resting in his lap. "Mm, quite. Did you know? They mate for life."

Crowley, whose attention had already begun drifting back toward Aziraphale, whipped his head around the rest of the way.

"Oh?" he croaked, then made a production of slouching even more insouciantly on the bench, nearly to the point of slipping onto the grass.

Aziraphale turned his face to Crowley, determinedly meeting his eyes through his sunglasses.

"Yes," he said firmly. "Is that something that... appeals to you, my dear?"

Crowley swallowed audibly, frozen for a long moment by the unusual ferocity of Aziraphale's stare. Then he performed a full-body twitch and turned his face back toward the pond. He reached up and scratched lightly over the serpent tattoo emblazoned on his temple and mumbled, "Yeah, I, ahhhh, yeah. I could. If you, er, if it appeals to you, angel."

Aziraphale's eyebrows jumped up. His mouth rounded in surprise. "Oh!" he said on a soft exhale. Then, visibly gathering himself, he turned back to watch the swans gliding lazily in sync amidst the ducks.

"I appreciate you telling me," Aziraphale said quietly after a moment.

"'Course."

  
  


Now, someone with an indifferent grasp of subtext or who had perhaps been distracted by an excitable dog on the walking path might have witnessed this exchange and thought the two man-shaped beings were talking about swans.

Someone who had been paying closer attention—maybe an intrepid young reporter for whom it was a professional occupation to discreetly eavesdrop on the conversations of odd-couple types at this particular park—might have grasped some of what was lurking beneath the surface. They might have blushed to themselves on the nearby bench and hid their face in their sketchpad at hearing such a painfully awkward negotiation between two man-shaped beings who had apparently reached an accord about the seriousness of their romantic relationship.

However, if you were a demon trundling about in a corporation with only a sneering relationship with the limitations of a human spinal column, what you would have heard was this:

"Dear Crowley, I would be receptive to your courtship. Of course, _naturally_ , this courtship should be modeled on the rituals and modes of the heavenly host, which are not dissimilar to those of the noble swan."

And if you were an angel snugged comfortably into a well-cared-for corporation with a predilection for human indulgences of all stripes, what you would have heard was this:

"Yeah, angel, I'd be up for some, erk, hnnnngh— _romantic_ overtures. But don't forget I'm really a big ol' snake under all this."

There is a reason why Shakespeare had a terrible preoccupation with dramatic irony and miscommunication as a plot device.

  
  


In Crowley's defense, he didn't remember much of his time Before. It was mostly a muffled smear of feelings and impressions occasionally interspersed with memories rendered in such surround-sound, technicolor crystal clarity they left the inside of his skull ringing like a struck gong when he thought of them. There were a lot of wings. And singing. Synchronized raising up and lowering down when in Her presence. Water hadn't been invented yet, but there was a thing where you "bathed" in pure energy, to renew yourself. There were stars…

Anyway, after a mortifying half-hour on YouTube, he thought there were enough… rough analogs to what memories remained that he supposed it wasn't too wild to think swans had been modeled on angels. Although, surely there had to have been some creative interpretation when translating behaviors from angelic true forms to water fowl. And surely Aziraphale would be expecting Crowley to take further artistic liberties since they were both sporting human corporations.

Probably, Aziraphale didn't expect Crowley to toss him into a pond, climb on his back, and very lovingly almost drown him.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

Well, it wasn't like human courtship rituals across all the myriad cultures that had bloomed and evolved and died over the millenia weren't already full of some weird shit anyway.

  
  


In Aziraphale's defense, Crowley never, as a rule, talked about the Fall, and he almost never spoke about his demonic aspect.

Crowley was a serpent, undeniably, in the same way Duke Hastur was a toad or Prince Beezlebub was a swarm of flies. But, it was a part of his demonic identity that Aziraphale had only ever seen him embrace obliquely, through his pointed sartorial choices or his appreciation of honeyed dormice. After that one fleeting glimpse on the wall of Eden, Aziraphale hadn't seen tail nor scale of Crowley's serpent form. He had suspicions that Crowley still took it on rare occasions for Hellish assignments, but only when there was no avoiding it, and always scrupulously when Aziraphale wasn't around to witness.

Added to the fraught relationship with his other form, Crowley was just about as allergic to talking about tender emotions as Aziraphale was. So, Aziraphale wasn't surprised that rather than outright saying he'd like to be courted like a serpent, Crowley left the signal as oblique as his saunter.

After extensive research, first in what books he had in his inventory, and then through judicious use of his old computer, which found itself very surprised to be not only in possession of an internal wireless router but within range of a network, he thought some of the behaviors quite sweet.

 _Probably_ , Crowley didn't expect Aziraphale to eat him, afterward. That was only a behavior in one species he found ready literature on, after all. Although, distressingly, it was a behavior many of the articles he was finding on the internet were very keen on raising, _and_ it was a species that got nearly big enough to rival Crowley's size.

And, it hadn't escaped his notice that Crowley watched him rather intensely when he was enjoying a good meal.

He pulled up a new browser tab to do a search on food play. Just in case.

  
  


The next day, the pair met at the bookshop in the early afternoon. There wasn't a pretense for it. There didn't need to be one any longer, now that they were on their own side. They had vague plans to go out for dinner in the evening, but in the meantime, each thought the other was planning, like most afternoons, to simply enjoy the shared company.

In actuality, each had dubious plans on how to go about wooing the other. Between the two, one of the plans was more hastily constructed than the other.

Crowley swanned in through the shop doors. In a purely metaphorical sense, to be sure, but he was hoping to put a certain vibe in the air.

Aziraphale looked up from his desk and did a double-take.

"My dear, are you quite all right?"

Crowley made a regal circuit of the table that sat under the oculus. "Yeah, course. Why wouldn't I be?" He brushed imaginary dust from one shoulder and then the other and then ostentatiously straightened the cuffs of his jacket.

Aziraphale watched him for a long moment, eyebrows climbing higher and higher on his forehead. "Your hips," he said weakly.

"What about them?" Crowley asked, who was bending several laws of physics and anatomy to keep his pelvis controlled enough for a smooth gait.

"I—nothing," Aziraphale said with a small head shake that seemed more aimed at himself than Crowley. He rose to his feet and straightened his waistcoat. "How are you?"

"How are you?" Crowley countered smoothly.

When Aziraphale approached, Crowley broke off his loop and came to stand nearly chest-to-chest with the angel. Much closer than normal. Close enough that he got a noseful of scent that was positively mouthwatering.

"New cologne?" he asked, surprised and so instantly smitten with the top notes that he unconsciously leaned in to get a better whiff of the base notes.

Aziraphale wriggled in place with a pleased hum. "Do you like it?" he asked, sounding positively delighted as he tipped his chin up to better expose his neck. "I did hope you would."

" _Yeah_ ," Crowley said, "good job on your barber, I—wait." He leaned back and looked up, as it occurred to him that he was only eye level with the angel's throat. "Did you… are you…" He leaned back and looked down to reassure himself Aziraphale hadn't decided to break out a pair of his old court pumps. "Did you make your corporation taller?" he demanded.

Aziraphale grinned. "I did! What do you think?" He turned around and peered at Crowley with a transparently coquettish look over his shoulder. "Does it suit? Me being… larger?"

"Ahhhhhhhh," Crowley got out, feeling a lot like a record player with a stuck groove.

The angel swayed backward so his back just brushed the front of Crowley's chest, and Crowley had to tip his chin up to avoid chipping it on the angel's shoulder. The move—the everything, actually—was overwhelming enough that he was spooked into taking a large step back.

Aziraphale half turned toward him with surprise written on his face, but then he glanced at the table under the oculus and blinked. "Oh, I see." After making rather significant eye contact, he began his own slow circuit of the table, putting a little swing into his hips that he normally reserved for when he _was_ wearing the court pumps.

Oh, Crowley thought, right. Maybe the angel was catching on to him.

Feeling back on firmer footing, he followed Aziraphale around the table. When Aziraphale trailed a finger over the top of a book, he made a production of raising his own hand in kind. When Aziraphale straightened his waistcoat, Crowley straightened his. When Aziraphale turned to spare him a slightly befuddled look over his shoulder, Crowley mirrored the head turn so they could maintain eye contact.

"Crowley," Aziraphale started, sounding a little concerned as he came to a stop.

"Aziraphale," he echoed, almost on top of the angel's voice.

When Aziraphale turned to him, brow furrowed, Crowley stepped up so their chests were pressed together and hissed, tenderly, in his face.

Aziraphale's whole face brightened. "Oh!" He cleared his throat and produced a fairly credible hiss back.

Crowley leaned in, intending to press their foreheads together. They might not have necks long enough to make the classic heart shape, but from the right perspective he thought they'd probably accomplish an ambiguous upside-down vase.

Before he could make contact, though, Aziraphale ducked down and tucked his head just under Crowley's chin. The angel butted up to rub first his soft curls and then the bridge of his nose against the line of Crowley's jaw. It was shockingly evocative.

Crowley let out a squeak of air, lungs too seized with emotion to manage anything more appropriate.

"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale said breathily, lips brushing against the jump of Crowley's pulse. "You look positively delicious today. I could _eat you up_."

Crowley was surprised into a punched-out laugh, which he did his best to morph into an amorous honk midway through.

"That's a lot more direct than I was expecting at this point," he admitted. "I thought we'd need to do some more synchronized head bobbing first before we got to the eating each other out stage."

Aziraphale pulled away abruptly, his brow inventing new wrinkles to properly convey his confusion.

"Synchronized head bobbing?" he parroted back. "Do you mean chin rubbing? Oh, and, before we continue, I really do think we should negotiate what our mutual expectations are about the potential for sexual cannibalism. I'm afraid I have some rather hard limits, but I do think we could reach a mutually satisfactory compromise with a judicious application of ganaches."

"The _what?_ " Crowley shrieked.

Aziraphale blinked. "Which part? Oh! Did you want to eat me instead? Oh, dear, I'm so sorry, Crowley, I'm afraid I may have made some rather hasty assumptions."

"I'll say!" Crowley thundered and grasped Aziraphale firmly by the shoulders. "No one is eating anyone," he said severely, "unless it's, ahhh, a sexy metaphor." Then, with a head bobble: "But let's not write off the ganaches idea."

Aziraphale slumped a bit under Crowley's hands in relief. "Oh, thank goodness. To each their own, of course, but I can't say I was properly excited about that aspect of certain serpent species' mating rituals, and I was worried it might turn out to be something you were looking forward to especially."

Crowley hung his head low between his outstretched arms, letting the angel take some of his weight as the shape of things started to untangle themselves a bit.

"You thought I might want you to eat me after we had sex," he clarifies, voice devoid of all emotion.

Aziraphale fidgeted his hands, finally beginning to realize by Crowley's reaction that he might not only have the wrong end of the stick but something altogether un-stick-like instead.

"Yes," he confirmed stoutly. "Because it's something that at least one species of serpents I researched do—an especially large species, at that. And, well, not to unfairly stereotype, but it did seem like something your, er, former side would encourage as a predilection—oh, bother, never mind." He took a deep breath, obviously recentering himself. "The point is, you were quite clear that you wanted me to follow serpent courtship rituals. "

"Aziraphale," Crowley said, voice muffled from still having his head hung so low, "please explain when I 'quite clearly' told you to court me like a snake."

"Why, yesterday, of course! By the pond!" He squeezed his hands together. "I asked you if you were _interested_ , and you said yes and touched your serpent's mark."

Crowley straightened up with a monumental indrawn breath through his nose, which he let out in a beleaguered sigh as he met Aziraphale's eye. He gently shook Aziraphale by the shoulders with each of his carefully enunciated words. "You. Were. Talking. About. Swans."

"Yes, the swans were how I started the conversation, but—" Aziraphale closed his mouth carefully over the end of his sentence and tipped his head back with a pained expression. "Swans," he lamented.

"Swans," Crowley confirmed. "Properly angelic, I thought."

"Swans," Aziraphale said forcefully, "are bastards—devotion to their partners notwithstanding."

Crowley ventured a tiny smile. "So are you, a bit. Made more sense in my head, I suppose."

Aziraphale laughed weakly. "I suppose," he agreed.

When he looked back at Crowley then, it was with the exact hue of exasperated fondness that Crowley thought was likely painted over his own face—that probably colored the lion's share of their relationship throughout all of human history.

Not that he was looking to introduce any other animals into the situation.

"Well, whatever just occurred here, it does seem we're in accord about wanting to be closer and more… intimate," Aziraphale ventured, reaching out finally to rest his hands hesitantly on Crowley's waist.

"Yeah, intimate," Crowley agreed with a slinky step forward so he could transition the grip he had on Aziraphale's shoulders into a twine around the back of his neck.

"And you like my new cologne," Aziraphale confirmed, fluttering his lashes just a bit.

"That is a fantastic cologne," Crowley said, not bothering to hide his admiration. Feeling emboldened, he leaned forward slowly and pressed his nose to the warm, fluttery point of Azirapahle's pulse and took a deep breath in through his nose and mouth simultaneously.

Aziraphale shivered under the feeling and clutched Crowley more firmly to him so that they were standing in a proper hug.

"I took some miraculous liberties, naturally—to personalize it—but it has as close as I could get to a celestial version of snake pheromones mixed in it," Aziraphale said in a tone Crowley thought he probably meant to sound apologetic but curled right into smug territory.

Crowley grumbled a few outraged vowels and then gently nipped at the skin closest to his mouth in retaliation. Aziraphale let out a muffled shriek and swatted playfully at Crowley's hip before he started snickering. Crowley couldn't help his resulting grin and settled for pressing it into his angel's neck.

Whatever. He'd set aside time to properly sulk just as soon as he was ready to let go.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Spoilery Trigger Warning:** So at least one species of anacondas practices sexual cannibalism, and Aziraphale, for ridiculous reasons, is low-key concerned that it might mean Crowley wants to engage in some supernatural vore, or something similar. The topic is discussed in the same way one might discuss a harder kink with a partner one's negotiating boundaries/limits with, but ultimately Aziraphale's mistaken about Crowley's expectations.
> 
> But actually, Aziraphale's bafflement and (literally) morbid fixation on snakes and sexual cannibalism is my own. [This BBC article is the culprit](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170608-snake-sex-is-every-bit-as-peculiar-as-you-would-expect), and I spent probably way too much time poking around at scholarly articles about snake mating habits trying to determine if this was a common or uncommon behavior across species as a result. 
> 
> ~~But it did put[that one extremely NSFW cracky vore fan art by Cliopadra](https://twitter.com/clitopadra/status/1261351538552745985) into a new light. (Seriously, tw:vore for that link.)~~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Courting Past Each Other](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909179) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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